


To Feel Anything at All

by Prix



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bonding, Consent Issues, M/M, Pining, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 07:38:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: Marik fears what Bakura can do to him.





	To Feel Anything at All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SetsuntaMew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SetsuntaMew/gifts).



Mutual fear; it’s what holds them together, even when their plans seem to run thin and dry. Marik is familiar with the feeling. In the underworld in which he grew up, it was the closest bond his family shared. He feels a hot jolt of pain in his back, as if he has been stabbed through the left shoulder blade. He sits up, drawing a sharp breath that he otherwise does not acknowledge. He blinks, and it seems to last a long time.

He knows he loses time. He knows it is a part of the blessing and the curse of his Millennium Rod, but he wonders what it is he is missing, exactly. He reaches down, clutching the light blanket that has fallen into his lap in his haste to escape the phantom pain arising from within his nerves.

He isn’t sure if he needs to hide the fact that he has been affected by something close to a dream. He glances over at his near associate. The pale young man with a ghostly white mane of hair falling around his face and down his shoulders looks nearly unnatural. His legs are crossed together, as is the custom of people of this country and the world over, and he holds a large, old book in his lap.

Marik has time to wonder only for a moment before he is startled by sudden eye contact and acknowledgment. There is a slight narrowing in Bakura’s eyes. Marik thinks it looks like suspicion, but there is no malice in his heart toward his ally. He has enough of it saved for the Pharaoh who is actually is enemy and those who would choose to defend him.

“Can’t sleep?” Bakura asks softly.

“No,” Marik admits, but then he goes back on it a little, not wanting to appear weak or out of sorts. “I’m fine,” he says.

A further narrowing of Bakura’s gaze holds him still for a moment, but just as quickly the gaze returns to the book as if Marik had never been a distraction at all.

“What are you reading?” Marik asks. It seems like such a casual question for this near-stranger he has found it fitting to try and sleep near while their plans take shape.

There is a long enough pause that Marik begins to believe that Bakura hadn’t heard him. He shifts his weight a little and tries to find a more comfortable position where he tries to rest.

“I am learning what we might add to our arsenal against our shared enemy,” Bakura replies only when Marik is shifting himself onto his back once more.

He finishes the movement and stares up at the ceiling, thinking it through for a moment.

“More rituals?” he asks.

“My landlord’s extracurricular interests aren’t entirely useless,” Bakura says. More cryptic insanity, but Marik knows all too well that whether or not it is real that it holds a very real power over him.

Marik shifts enough that he can glance across at Bakura without sitting up once more.

“Anything I should know about?” he asks, a little more snippy from his more strained position.

Bakura reaches to his mouth and lightly moistens a fingertip with a tap to his tongue. Marik swallows and finds the ceiling again. He closes his eyes.

“We’ll find out, won’t we,” Bakura says, apparently pleased with himself. His sentence punctuates with a hum, and not long later, Marik manages to go back to sleep.

 

\+ + +

 

Bakura seems angry with him. It is the first thing he notices when he becomes aware of what his body is feeling, a little piece at a time, beginning with a piercing but brief headache around his forehead. Marik wonders what Bakura is so angry about, but when he meets his eyes, he sees it again. He knows it. That anger isn’t just anger; it is tinged with the same fear he has held deep inside all his life. Bakura, for all his knowledge of magic and the wicked things the powers beyond them can be constrained to do, looks afraid of the dark.

This always happens. He wonders where his brother got to. He wonders if he is alone with Bakura again.

When the feeling comes back into the rest of him, Marik lifts his hands, palms facing forward. It is a strange, peacemaking gesture that he all at once feels might push him away if he came close enough. Then Marik notices the blood on his own hands. He pulls them down and looks them over. He looks around for the source of it. He notices movement coming closer.

Bakura kneels before him.

“Idiot,” he mutters, and he helps him. Marik wonders why, but he soon forgets his own worries.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks.

“As if you could,” Bakura says, but Marik silently confirms that there isn’t a scratch on him. He is relieved. After all, he does not know where he would find a more committed ally in his crusade against the Pharaoh.

 

\+ + +

 

When he finally understands what he has become, Marik is surprised that Bakura keeps his alliance with him. Bakura even helps him fight the part of himself that is well beyond their control. He wonders if Bakura could run if he wanted to or if the darkness inside him would allow it. He sees the look that Bakura gets in his eyes sometimes, and he thinks he wonders the same.

They are afraid of one another, but in the same breath Marik knows that he is afraid for Bakura. He knows that it means he wants to keep him safe, and he wonders if that is mutual, too.

 

\+ + +

 

They are somewhere strange but altogether too familiar to Marik. The stones beneath his feet radiate heat from the day, but the air has gone cold. He hesitates at the entrance of a building, above-ground but still as wide as the open mouth of a tomb.

A hand reaches out and seizes him by the wrist. It is cooler to the touch than the air and surprisingly dry. He looks down and sees the pale hand tugging him along not into darkness but into glowing, warm light that lines the passageway.

“Come on,” Bakura says gruffly. He speaks even more lowly than usual, and he guides Marik purposefully.

“Where are we going?” he asks when he finds his voice.

“I need you to trust me,” Bakura replies. Marik feels his will to resist following Bakura into the place that feels so much like an ancient prison lessen. The dry air that moves across his skin chills him, but he watches Bakura with some hopeful fascination. He _needs him_ to _trust him_ , and both those thoughts are so novel that he feels a small thrill at them both.  

He shouldn’t be shocked, shouldn’t be surprised, and above all else shouldn’t trust it, and yet he wants to, almost more than he wants anything they have in common.

 

\+ + +

 

Bakura climbs up onto a raised platform at the end of a narrower chamber when they come to it. Marik notices the absence of his hand which, while it felt cool to the touch, seemed to have warm his skin. He notices that there is something distant and determined in Bakura’s eyes, and as he exhales he gives himself a moment to take stock of where he has brought him to.

While the rest of his place seems to have been made for many people, this room seems separated and closed off. It makes his stomach churn a bit, reminding him of another small and ritual chamber he had been taken to as a child.

“You know, it really would help if you would tell me what was going on,” Marik comments. There is a little bite to it, but it is familiar and not with particular malice. He spots something that looks like an emptied altar and wanders over to it, taking a seat on its edge without particular care for its ritual significance.

Even if he had once known any way of holding these sacred things in any awe or reverence, it had been bled out of him, deaf to the pain he felt. Even thinking about it makes him feel dizzy, so he glances up at watches Bakura again. He notices that Bakura is reading some ancient book that looks as if it is bound in animal hide. He thinks of his own scarred skin and stretches the muscles in his shoulders and upper back as if to feel that the remaining flesh is still there, against the fabric of his sleeveless shirt.

“Quiet,” Bakura admonishes him, and Marik likes to think that it is also with familiarity, without malice, but how would he know?

He watches as a small, crooked but straightening smile starts to spread from Bakura’s lips to his eyes. His companion finally looks over at him. He thinks that his expression is thoughtful, appraising.

“What is it?” Marik asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Oh, I just wonder if you’re willing is all…” Bakura replies as if it is a novel concern that has only just occurred to him. Then tension in Marik’s stomach lightens but doesn’t go away.

“Willing to _what_?” he asks.

“... Well,” Bakura says. He takes a moment to keep his place in the book and approaches where Marik is sitting. He sits down beside him and meets his eyes. “I suppose I should ask… whether or not you are a _virgin_ ,” he says. Then he laughs, freely and without restraint.

For a long moment, listening to Bakura laugh, Marik isn’t sure what to do with the question. He fiddles with his own fingers in his lap, making his posture smaller. His brow knits with some worry and some offense, but then he looks back over at Bakura with a slight glare.

“Of course I am,” he says, biting as if it will somehow turn the tables. He doesn’t know why, exactly, the laughter seems to hurt. He also knows that Bakura won’t like it if he allows himself to become very hurt.

Bakura finally settles himself and draws a deep breath.

“As am I. This host at least,” he says. His gaze goes distant as if he is considering the finer points of this distinction.

Marik makes an effort to look him in the eye and capture his attention.

“What the hell does virginity have anything to do with your magic nonsense?”

“Everything?” Bakura scoffs.

“And you didn’t think to ask me about this before now…” Marik says. Still, the well in his gut seems to get lighter and dig deeper.

“I _assumed_ that you would be willing to do whatever it took to meet our goals.”

They speak about them so vaguely at times that Marik wonders if they even have the same goals in min anymore. He knows that it originated with a desire to make themselves difficult to detect, difficult to eavesdrop upon, but they are all alone here. Sometimes, Marik wonders if the only real goal he has left is seeing _this_ , whatever it is, through to the end. With Bakura, sometimes, he almost forgets the Pharaoh, his father, his scars. Almost.

“Including _having sex_ with you?” Marik demands bluntly when he finally finds his tongue again.

Bakura gives him that same maddening half-shrug.

“I’m the only other person here,” he remarks.

“And that’s all that matters.”

“What else… would?” Bakura asks, as if the question is nearly enough to throw him off his maddening, stupid balance.

Marik stands up abruptly. He takes a few steps toward the platform. Then he balls his hands into fists and goes over to the spellbook. He only gives it a once-over and recognizes a handful of words, a handful of symbols, and he doesn’t want to know anymore. Anger courses through him, but it bleeds down and cools when he looks at Bakura, still sitting there.

“Well, have you made up your mind?” Bakura presses, but his confident, sly tone seems to have tarnished just a little.

“About _you_ ?” Marik demands. He doesn’t know if Bakura is even capable of understanding, suddenly, and it opens up the rest of the chasm that he has feared inside himself. It isn’t the darkness that overtakes him and makes him want to kill to a point of loss of thought, loss of self, madness. Instead, it is an emptiness, warm and meant for light that he can’t find anywhere in the world. He wishes, he wants, and he needs, and it’s stupid and pitiful _what_ he wishes for, wants, needs.

“What about _me_?” Bakura asks. His gaze is so clear that it is almost as if he pretends to be the innocent, naive boy trapped somewhere else inside the pieces of souls that reside inside his body.

Marik walks over to him, angry and determined at once, and he throws himself into it. He pushes his mouth against Bakura’s. He isn’t very good at it, and at first it is a bruising force of teeth against lips, but he soon learns at least enough that it stops hurting either of them.

When he hears Bakura’s voice catch in his throat, he chases after the fleeting feeling that maybe he can somehow fill the void inside himself, the void between them that he has learned to hope against. He puts one knee down and then the other, leaning in over Bakura until his hands move back to brace himself.

At first, Marik is too inexperienced to know whether or not Bakura is responding in kind. He doesn’t know what being kissed back would feel like.

Then, suddenly, he does. He feels the soft return of movement. He feels Bakura shift his hand and meet his side. It seems that Bakura himself doesn’t know what he intends to do with it, but finally the touch softens without purpose.

Marik is afraid of what will happen if they speak. He doesn’t know if he wants to know the truth. Instead, he wonders if he can just get it over with. If it would even make Bakura happy for a moment, if it would even make Marik feel something he isn’t sure he knows how to feel for a moment, he wonders if everything that would come after might be worth it.

He pushes forward with this plan, knowing that it might end in disaster. Soon, Bakura is lying on his back beneath him. Bakura’s hand slides up along his side, and he catches his breath. Strange that a man with scars covering nearly half his body could feel ticklish, but he does. He smiles a little against Bakura’s lips.

He wonders if that is somehow linked to why Bakura’s hand trails back down, finding his hip and gripping _before_ he seems to try and find a way to push down his fitted pants.

“– _things_ –” Marik hears and _feels_ against his lips.

He wants to laugh. He is very nearly happy, he realizes, and it’s the stupidest kind of happiness he can imagine.

Then, Bakura’s hand withdraws. He feels it, like he had felt the absence of his hand around his wrist.

He knows he has to pull back, has to ask, but he doesn’t want to.

“What?” he asks irritably when he creates enough space between them.

“It’s useless,” Bakura informs him. He lies back beneath him, though, completely inert and without trying to push him off.

“What’s useless?”

Bakura gestures between them with an agile finger.

“This,” he says, “without the ritual, it won’t _do_ anything.”

Then Marik dearly wishes he had never let him say anything. He glares at him.

“I don’t _care_ about–”

“I know,” Bakura replies. He sighs heavily. “I know,” he repeats, and he tries to sit up a little. Marik backs off enough to let him, but he doesn’t put much more distance between them. “And you… it isn’t just…” He pauses, so rarely lost for what exactly he wants to say when he chooses to speak. “I brought you here,” he settles on. And when Bakura meets his eyes again, Marik knows that he is foolish. He knows that even now, he is afraid – afraid of what Bakura can _do_ to him, but he leans in and kisses him again, granting him permission and forgiveness for anything that comes after.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, it occurred to me to write a Ritual Sex fic. I like that trope, but it is kind of, by its very nature, about dubious consent. Then, I started thinking about the sort of complicated do-they-even-care-about-each-other aspect of their relationship, and I think they do, but I think that they really should communicate about it or something. I also thought it would be a bit funny if they messed up a sex ritual because feelings. But ultimately, I am a coward and wrote about the feelings only in the end. Please, let me know if you enjoyed and what you think happened afterward if it is worth that kind of consideration. I hope you enjoyed what this became...


End file.
